Show Notes: Episode 140

  • Sharpen your digital images
    Ray Maxwell
    Electronics Engineer, Color Scientist, Teacher, Speaker

    There is a lot of confusion about what the “sharpen” filter does in Photoshop. The Web Link below takes you to a wonderful tutorial that explains the “Smart Sharpen” filter.

    http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/SmartSharpenSM.mov

  • How to design and build applications in the “Web 2.0” era of social networking, user generated content, and web services.
    Michael Fergusson
    Chief Product and Innovation Officer, Kinzin

    http://www.kinzin.com

    1. Scaling poorly can be a big problem. Ever you said to yourself: “that would be a great problem to have”? It’s not. Scaling smoothly is not easy, and the penalty for not doing so is high, as the early adopters that you want to evangelize your app get turned away with ugly error messages. We will discuss some of the important aspects of scaling your facebook app, from what are the most impactful optimizations, to how to choose someone to host your app.
    2. Scaling well can cause problems, too. The flip side of the scaling problem, if you are launching your app on a shoestring, is that while watching the user count go up can be exhilarating, it can also be very expensive. How can you make sure that your success doesn’t bankrupt you?
    3. Facebook is not a very mature platform. Developing, deploying, and testing your app can be a very frustrating experience. We will point out some of the gotchas, and share some of what we have learned for working around them.
    4. When you are deploying on Facebook’s platform, you are playing by their rules. Many developers are confused about those rules, or only find out about certain important restrictions after they have made significant investments in development. We’ll point out some of the key things to know about the Facebook terms of service, and the obligations they place on app developers.
    5. There is no one right way to do it. Every developer has her own programming style, preferred tools, methods of working. We will discuss some of the options and alternatives we researched, and some of our reasoning for doing things the way we did.

  • Using Quartz Composer to create iTunes Visualizers
    Randal L. Schwartz
    General Manager of Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc.

    Show how to use Quartz Composer to take the existing RSS and add the time
    of day to the display. Show how to use Quartz Compositions in
    iVisualize to create iTunes Visualizers, and with Camtwist to alter my webcam
    images. Note that Leopard will make iVisualize essentially “built in”, so
    it’ll be even simpler to create cool iTunes visualizations.

    RELATED WEBSITE LINKS
    Quartz Composer: http://developer.apple.com/
    iVisualize: http://web.mac.com/vogelbusch/Site/iVisualize.html
    Camtwist: http://allocinit.com/index.php?title=CamTwist

    PRODUCTS SHOWN
    Quartz Composer
    iVisualize
    Camtwist

  • Be a Better Beta Tester
    Rick Yaeger
    www.MacMerc.com